Bankrupt and hemorrhaging population, the city of Detroit is banking on greener pastures to lead its rebirth.

A private company is snapping up 150 acres on the Motor City's East End -- property where more than 1,000 homes once formed a gritty neighborhood -- and turning it into what is being billed as the world's largest urban farm. Hantz Woodlands plans to start by planting trees, but hopes to raise crops and even livestock in the future, right in the midst of the once-proud city.

“We are interested with moving into different types of agriculture,” Mike Score, president of Hantz, told FoxNews.com.

“Your eyes would have a hard time absorbing the blight.”

- Mike Score, Hantz Woodlands

Hantz needed approval from Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to buy up the 1,500 parcels for approximately $450,000, or $300 per parcel. Many of the parcels held dilapidated and abandoned homes and buildings and were condemned by the city. Others were rubble-strewn or weed-choked lots. The company intends to spend $3 million to clean out the areas.

“Your eyes would have a hard time absorbing the blight,” Score said. “A third of every neighborhood in Detroit has been devalued by blight on public property.

Score and local officials believe a well-run farm is the best way to stabilize the area's downward spiral, and help surrounding homes and businesses keep their property values from falling further.

Not everyone is a fan of turning such a huge swath of Detroit into a farm. The proposal was met with criticism from local residents and even area agricultural groups. It squeaked by the City Council by a razor-thin margin of 5-4.

“I think there’s concern in this transaction,” said Nevin Cohen, a professor of Environmental Studies at New York's New School who has been monitoring the plan. “The city [Detroit] needs to figure out its blight problem without hurting the members of the community.”

“Replicating a community farm is not as important as addressing issues of race and class concerns -- which underlie Detroit’s problems,” he said.

Groups such as Detroit Black Community Food Service, which runs large community food-garden D-Town Farm, near Rouge Park, have come out against the Hantz proposal. Small vest pocket community gardens like theirs have sprung up around the city, with backers saying it gives local residents a stake in their neighborhoods one empty lot at a time -- as opposed to a giant farm run by outsiders.

It's about time! The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world to attempt to maintain a free market in land (perhaps the only country). The effect has been a continuous outflow of more affluent individuals to suburbs over the past 100-150 years, while the urban centers decay.

Residential use is a non-productive use of land. Growing crops, including trees, is a productive and sustainable use. Returning derelict land to productive status is the first step. The next step is a system of property taxation that rewards people who remain in the urban centers, and punishes those who subdivide farms and open spaces for non-productive (non-farming, non-woodlot) purposes.

Buy the land outright but don't turn it into a community farm. All profits go to paying down detroit a debt. The farm will fail miserably anyway and the hassles of dealing with Detroit politics is not worth it.

Kate Devlin, who lives on the east side of Detroit and runs two urban gardens in the city, Faith Farm and Spirit Farm, called Council's vote a bad decision. Like many opponents of the agreement she sees the deal as a land grab intended to drive up scarcity and increase the price of land.

"I think it opens the gateway for other rich folks to come here to buy up land and essentially make themselves rich compounds," she told The Huffington Post.